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Though Google created the “other” option for privacy reasons rather than as a transgender choice, young supporters of preferred gender pronouns (or P.G.P.’s as they are called) could not help but rejoice. Katy is one of a growing number of high school and college students who are questioning the gender roles society assigns individuals simply because they have been born male or female.

“You have to understand, this has nothing to do with your sexuality and everything to do with who you feel like inside,” Katy said, explaining that at the start of every LGBTQQA meeting, participants are first asked if they would like to share their P.G.P.’s. “Mine are ‘she,’ ‘her’ and ‘hers’ and sometimes ‘they,’ ‘them’ and ‘theirs.’ ”

P.G.P.’s can change as often as one likes. If the pronouns in the dictionary don’t suffice, there are numerous made-up ones now in use, including “ze,” “hir” and “hirs,” words that connote both genders because, as Katy explained, “Maybe one day you wake up and feel more like a boy.”

Aggression is another. Many men grow up in a world of hostile body language and real physical violence that is almost entirely invisible to women. A bar fight that sounds traumatic to a female therapist may be no more than a good night out for a man. Likewise, a stare-down in the sandbox that looks vanishingly trivial from a distance may lie like a poisoned well in the stream of the unconscious.

In just the past few years, psychologists have identified a number of issues that are, in effect, male versions of the gender-identity issues that so many mothers face in the work force: the self-doubt of being a stay-at-home father, the tension between being a provider and being a father, even male post-partum depression.

Yet new research in the field suggests that there are universal triggers, behaviors that almost all of us find inappropriate. Overhearing a one-sided cellphone conversation, for example, tops the list of irritants, transcending generations, gender and cultures.While this may seem unsurprising — people tend to raise their voices on cellphone calls, and their migratory nature can feel as though someone is cavalierly invading our personal space — there’s a cognitive reason they particularly grate: Our survival once depended on predicting what someone would say or do next.“You might think that when you’re having a conversation with someone, your brain is focused on listening,” the authors write. “In fact, your brain is focused on guessing what the person is going to say.”It’s unconscious and automatic — as is the desire to predict when something is going to end. The excruciation of overhearing a cellphone call isn’t just related to the banality of the conversation, or the pitch and volume of the voice — it’s hoping to God that it’ll be over soon, but having no sense how likely that is.

To be a New Yorker is to be in a perpetual state of annoyance. Leaving doesn’t help — if anything, it only exacerbates the tendency to be annoyed.

The Klontz study asked 422 people about 72 money-related beliefs and then analyzed correlations among the answers. This produced four broad categories that Mr. Klontz called “money scripts”: money avoidance, money worship, money status and money vigilance. How does he define them?

Those who are in the money avoidance camp share beliefs that make them distance themselves from money. Mr. Klontz said this group may be worried about abusing credit cards. They may believe that they do not deserve to have money and may sabotage their own financial well-being. People in this group tend to have low incomes and net worth. They also tend to be younger. People who fall into the money worship camp would seem to be the opposite, but their behaviors are equally destructive. They believe that an increase in income or a windfall will make everything better and love the status derived from the things that money can buy. This belief also lands people in debt because they use whatever credit they have to buy things that will impress others.

“They believe money will solve all of your problems,” Mr. Klontz said. “This is the money belief pattern that afflicts the majority of Americans.” Anxiety about money status occurs when people’s self-worth is linked to their net worth. These people often take bigger financial risks because they want to have the stories of big gains to impress their friends. (Don’t expect them to tell you when those big bets do not pay off.) The only affliction that did not have an overwhelmingly negative impact on people’s financial future was money vigilance. People with this disorder do not like to share information about their income or wealth, but they also do not spend foolishly. Still, excessive wariness about spending can keep these people from enjoying the benefits of what money can buy. On the other hand, while they did not necessarily have higher incomes, they paid off their credit card bills each month. “Maybe some anxiety and vigilance around money is good for your bottom line,” Mr. Klontz said. Not surprisingly, the four money scripts illustrate problems that have less to do with money than with what money represents. But what may be surprising is that the study found few links between who held what belief and their family background, race, gender, education level or income.